BIO: Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the author of Gravities of Center
(Arkipelago Books, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish Press,
2005), which received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of
American Poets. Her chapbooks, Easter Sunday and Cherry, are published
by Ypolita Press and Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, respectively. Her
current manuscript is entitled Diwata, which is a Tagalog word
meaning, "muse." Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared or are
forthcoming in 2nd Avenue Poetry, Asian Pacific American Journal,
Boxcar Poetry Review, Chain, Crate, Fairy Tale Review, Interlope, In
the Grove, MiPOesias, New American Writing, North American Review,
Notre Dame Review, Octopus Magazine, Parthenon West Review, Traffic,
Womb Poetry, XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics, among others. She lives with
her husband, poet Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland.

EXCERPT from "Corpse Eater":

I am the heart of greed darkening rotten western values. I am the
blade cutting English into tongues.

I am the multitudes manufacturing whiteness. I emerge from industry,
an American, a white man.

I am the ethnic slur, the name meaning "fat taker." In the footsteps
of our Mr. Kurtz, I emerge.

Any white man could do, and frequently did, as I did, with impunity. I
bear my burden, I cleanse the impure.

I rule because I am elevated by many, many steps above. I spin erotic
tales of exploits "Far East," where I am the myth many locals have
never seen before.

I declare war, as unprincipled profiteers exhume the newly deceased,
and eat their ethnic corpses.